Unit Detection and tree destruction

I have two separate questions that I can't seem to find the answers too.

A. I created a mine based off of the Goblin Land Mine. This mine floats in the ocean and is meant to destroy boats. I changed nothing accept the model, icon, and the amount of damage done. If you place it on the shoreline and a ground creep walks over it, it explodes. If a pirate ship creep sails over one that is placed in the ocean, it does not trigger. I tried adjusting the "targets allowed" field and added mechanical in addition to ground. No affect.

B. How can I make "Death and Decay" not damage trees?

A. I just tried this with classical goblin mine placed in water and it is triggered by land and see units as well. Perhaps, if your ships are big, you should perhaps increase AoE of mine ability.

B. No way. You can create trigger based spell but you cant make this with death and decay

I changed the mines movement type to float, would this perhaps have anything to do with it?

Perhaps, try first making a unit that can go in water (you know hydra, sea turtle, whatever) and see if it detonates, if it does its something with the targets if it doesnt then it's probably something hard-coded about the mine spell. Try making the mine's AOE bigger (as aforementionned) so you know for sure it'll trigger.

I tried the AOE affect, nothing changed. When you tried the classic mine, did it float on the water or was it at the bottom of the ocean?

EDIT: I made a test map for it, and the boats do not set off a regular mine in shallow water. Any thoughts?

Try going into a boat and see everything its targeted as and its movement and make sure you add all of them, perhaps?

I'll go make a quick map right now and see if I cant get something to work.

Otherwise you could try just making a unit that is created (such as ward) and trigger it to check range/proximity of enemy units/boats... Or again you could try triggering it so that if a boat comes next to the mine it tells the mine to explode? I'll go test now and see what works best. ;)

Oh and with the Death and Decay you could try instead a spell like Blizzard... i believe might also have decaying... or if not you could just do life drain abilty and make dummy units cast on all units within range of the ability... or you could have it cast something like blizzard with AoE click and not do any damage and make a dummy unit with negative regenerative auras.

Keep in mind that triggers need to be multi-instable, and I would prefer no triggers.

Yeah I know it would need to work variant and not constant, but I've looked through the mine settings and tested them all, I couldn't get a proper working mine to react to any water based unit... Nor could I even get the mine to place itself on water right... In order to check the range between a unit entering an area requires you to convert to custom text or select a premade unit... It sees when you target it as "Unit Casts Ability." So if you say "create unit at cast point" "set last created unit = mine[minenum]" "minenum=minenum+1" And then custom code another trigger to say "a unit comes within range of (for 0 to minenum) mine[forloop]" "damage triggering unit" "explode mine" "some special effect" blah blah blah...

Damnit Blizzard. Anyone that could make a JESP JASS ability would be great.

I think with blizzard, modifying the AOE, and changing the blizzard effect with the dead and decay effect will work fantastic and you won't need any trigger. if you see my kraken spell, I use that ability, the spell duration depends on the channel animation time by number of spell waves.

About the mines, well, I think the answer is triggers and a custom ability based on an aura.